The Prospector

Occasional ramblings from an Alaskan prospector:
"Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind,
there's a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling,
calling. . .let us go." Robert Service

Monday, April 23, 2012

Myers Fork

Myers Fork is a small creek about a mile north of Chicken that drains southeast into Chicken Creek. The creek flows through a
high-angle-fault bounded, structurally down-dropped basin that preserves
a wedge of Tertiary gabbro and sedimentary rocks. The structural basin is bounded to the south and east by the Taylor
Mountain batholith of Triassic age and to the north and west by upper
Paleozoic greenschist-facies metasedimentary and metavolcanic rocks. In the headwaters of Myers Fork, the upper Paleozoic metamorphic rocks
are in high-angle fault contact with the Chicken pluton of Jurassic age
to the north.

Quaternary alluvium and colluvium deposits are
extensive within the Myers Fork area and Chicken Creek valley. They
largely consist of gravel and lesser silt and sand overlain by muck. Many Quaternary terrace
gravel benches of possible glaciofluvial origin occur up to 600 feet
above the creek. Along Myers Fork, at least four
bedrock benches are recognized below the stream gravels. Near the lower
part of Myers Fork, the alluvium is as much as 15 feet thick, and silt
and muck over it is about 11 feet thick.

Most of the
gold on the east side of the creek occurs on top of a clay- and
silt-rich layer and in fine gravels just below it, a few inches above
bedrock. Very little gold is present within or on top of bedrock on the lower end of the creek. The
gold is not extremely coarse, but there have been nuggets found that weigh over an ounce including at least one 3 oz nugget. Placer concentrates contain mostly magnetite and ilmenite, as well as
minor garnet, barite, scheelite, and zircon. A potential source for
placer gold in Myers Fork is the Purdy lode gold prospect, which
is located on the ridge just north of the creek. Myers Fork has been
mined by drifting, sluicing, bulldozer, and hydraulic methods. Placer
gold was produced from the late 1890's to at least 1940, and intermittently
in the 1970's. Production in 1904-1907 that included that from Myers Fork,
Lost Chicken , Stonehouse Creek, and Ingle Creek totaled about 18,835 fine ounces. Small scale, recreational mining has produced several hundred ounces in the past few years.

Garret Romaine wrote an article about Chicken Alaska for the "Gold Prospectors" magazine several years ago which mentions Chicken Gold Camp's operation on Myers Fork (http://writingdocs.blogspot.com/2007/12/chicken-alaska.html). Below is a picture of a one ounce gold nugget specimen found by one of Chicken Gold Camp's customers:

Wow, I wish we had gold like that in Colorado Springs. Most of the gold prospecting here in Colorado is placer....very fine placer gold. Anyway if in Colorado Springs, stop by Sunny Mountain Prospectors for gold prospecting supplies.